Heartless Legacy (Heartless Heirs of Canyon Falls #4)

97. Finn

Chapter 97

Finn

I ’ve done some thinking, and I’m fully onboard with Thea’s plan to claim the fourth bloodline. I suffered through working with other people during the team building challenge and walked away empty-handed. There’s no way I’d survive being saddled with any of those candidates for the rest of my life.

According to Holden, his team wasn’t much better. Everyone knows Holden’s the smartest person on campus, and no one asked the resident genius if he had another theory about what their clue meant.

Thea stealing the fourth bloodline out from under everyone’s nose is absolutely the right move. Isn’t that what these challenges are all about? Taking what we want and proving we’re the best? What better way for her to do that than to steal a position that she’s not supposed to be eligible for?

That will prove she’s as ruthless and resourceful as a top level legacy family needs to be to survive in our world. It won’t be easy. She’ll need our help, whether she wants it or not, and I plan to do whatever I can to support her.

We’ll have to watch out for the other families. They want to win just as much as I do. I believe the stories we heard about families killing heirs are true, and I’m not willing to risk Thea becoming another cautionary tale. I’ll cut through anyone who gets in my way.

I take a deep breath as I lean my elbows against the railing on my balcony. I feel freer. Lighter. With just one simple decision, the last of the chains are off. The expectations of our society will no longer hold me back.

I don’t care what The League thinks. I’m done moderating my behavior to fit into their mold. Complying with what they want just gets me further away from my goal, which is building a life with Thea. There’s no way they’ll be able to deny my contract when she waltzes into chambers with whatever this ultimate challenge item is.

Heading back inside, I work out the beginning of a plan. No one’s going to volunteer information about their challenge clues with me, so I’ll have to do what I do best and uncover their most precious secrets, just like I did with Thea.

She hasn’t gone into detail about her guards, but it’s obvious to me that they’re not just run-of-the-mill security. These men are professionally trained and dangerous. It’s like she’s running around with her own little militia, and the upscale building she doesn’t think I know about is swarming with other tenants just like them.

They’re ghosts. I wonder where they hide, when she’s off causing trouble- like the other day when I found her in the gym- using Pax’s face as her saddle. Sadly, she didn’t get to finish what she was doing. I had to run off a group of people who had the worst fucking timing ever. Thea took off after she heard the commotion.

I step into the hallway, thinking about what a missed opportunity it was. I was all set to join them, too. Oh well, there will be other times. I’ll make sure of it. Pax is stepping off the elevator as I approach it. “Hey.”

“Hey.” I say with a head nod. Shit. This is still awkward and painful. One of us needs to grow a pair. I guess it’ll be me. “Look, man, I know everything is fucked between us, but I want to make it right.”

“So do I.”

“I understand why you did what you did, but that doesn’t mean I like it. I wish you would’ve come to me about your…” I pause, struggling with the right words. “Situation with Eloise. I’m finally ready to move past what happened. We haven’t been as effective in our challenges as we can be because of the tension, and I don’t want things to get any worse.”

“I agree, Finn.”

Things have been better between us since the bunker. I’m sixty percent certain we’re all finally back on the same page. Forty-five percent. Okay, it’s mid-thirty percent, but Holden and I can always drug Pax and lock him up in my warehouse if we think he’s making another move against us.

This would be a good time to bridge the gap with him, by letting him know what Thea’s planned, but his situation with Eloise is a problem. I nod. “Good.”

After a few more seconds of awkwardly staring at each other, I step around him and push the elevator call button. The doors open right away. I want to trust that the words we just spoke about fixing our friendship are sincere, but Pax is good at words. At saying the diplomatic thing. I know his attraction to Thea is real. It’s always been there even when he pretended he wasn’t, but wanting Thea physically is not the same thing as wanting her.

He’ll have to earn her trust, before I divulge her confidence, and her trust is on backorder these days.

Thea

Hanging out with LJ

I reread the text Thea sent me when I asked if she was up for another movie night.

She is not at LJ’s dorm. I watch from the shadows as she picks the lock to Dean Gibson’s house and quickly silences the alarm.

I was heading to LJ’s to convince her to reconsider or to crash their girls’ night. I hadn’t decided which way I was leaning. But before I had to choose a tactic, Thea walked out the front door and wound her way through campus. I invited myself along for this little excursion, because I’m curious about what she’s up to, and because I really want my date night.

Quietly, I inch around to the side of the house, and slip through the window I usually use to enter the dean’s residence. I watch as she rearranges the pillows on the sofa and switches out the batteries on the remote before hiding it under the couch.

I wait until I hear her muffled steps above me before using the back stairs to the second floor to see what she’s doing. I hide in the bedroom's closet closest to the back stairs, until I hear the fifth step on the main staircase creak, alerting me she’s heading back downstairs. A quick peek into Dean Gibson’s bathroom shows his toothbrush holder is on the opposite end of the counter, from where it usually stands. It takes me a little longer to figure out what she’s changed in his bedroom. His reading glasses are stuffed between his pillows, and his slippers are on his wife’s side of the bed.

I hurry down the backstairs and find her in the dean’s home office. I dart into the powder room across from it to watch. Biting down on my knuckle to keep back a moan when she cracks his safe, leaving it slightly ajar so that he’ll question if someone opened it or if he just forgot to close it. Next, she pulls a book off of his bookshelf and flips through it before returning it. She does the same with a few more. She finally grabs a book on a lower shelf and pulls what looks like a credit card out of it, then pulls a machine out of her backpack, running it over both sides of the card.

Her head whips around towards the door. I back further into the powder room. I realize it’s not my presence she’s sensing when I hear the front door close. She scrambles out the office window, while I wait for that fifth step to creek. When I hear footsteps on the floor above me, I slip out the back door and around the side of the house to hide behind the hedges.

A light comes on in an upstairs bedroom. It’s the one I hid in and belongs to bitch boy Timmy Gibson. While Thea was re-accessorizing the dean’s bedroom and bathroom, I was going through old Timmy boy’s things. I took a picture of a copy of the math midterm I found in his closet. He likes to charge people for the answers. I send a picture of the first page to a few people and make it look like it came from Tim.

Oops . How clumsy of me. I accidentally included the teacher on the Prospectus alert. Once I’m done, I hurry to the parking lot, because my gut tells me Thea’s not heading back to LJs after playing cat burglar.

I catch her as she climbs into the SUV that transports her to and from school. Rushing to the garage, I jump into my car to follow, hanging back in traffic so they don’t spot me. We drive to the industrial area of downtown LA.

I park on the corner and watch as the SUV pulls into a warehouse. Armed guards follow it inside. When I exit my car, I walk around to the back of the building and climb on top of a dumpster to get a look inside. Before I can even set my feet good, a voice says, “Why are you scurrying around back here like a little mouse?”

A red dot appears on the dumpster as I reach for my knife. The guy behind me says, “I was lying about the implant, but not about voting to kill you. Looks like we need to vote again.” He yanks me off the dumpster, and shoves me towards, and then thru the back door.

Thea takes one look at me and rolls her eyes. “Really, Finn? You just insist on trampling over my boundaries?”

I counter with, “You wouldn’t feel like I trampled over them if you were really at girl’s night like you said you’d be.”

“I didn’t lie about my plans. I hung out with LJ.”

“For what? Five minutes before you broke into Dean Gibson’s house?”

The guards move around us, ignoring our squabble. Good. Everyone in Thea’s security detail gives me the impression that they’d shoot me without hesitation and not spend a second worrying if they’d get away with it.

“So, what’s going on here?” I ask, taking it all in.

“A challenge.” Thea says, slipping on a jacket. I want to ask her another question, but I’m distracted by her outfit. My girl looks hot, all decked out in black. Deacon comes into the room, takes one look at me and shakes his head, clearly unimpressed by my presence. The guards would kill me, but Deacon would probably lead the clean-up efforts, tell Thea I ran off, and help her look for me knowing I’m buried under concrete at a construction site.

“What do you want to do about him?” One of the guards asks.

“Kill him.” The trigger-happy one answers.

“We’re not killing him.” Thea sighs. “Finn, you really shouldn’t have followed me.”

“Maybe, but I did and whatever you’re about to get into, I can help.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

She looks at me, unblinking, and says, “This isn’t a league challenge, Finn. I’m breaking into the Kolper Gallery.”

“Thea, if you want a private showing, I can arrange for us to have one. No crimes needed.”

“Not that gallery, and what I’m looking for is something that won’t be on a public showroom floor.” As she walks away, she asks, “You still wanna help?”

It’s a no brainer. I immediately answer, “What’s the plan?”

I sat through an hour long mission brief listening as Thea’s guards outlined the plan. This is so much more than your average prank. Pissed doesn’t adequately explain the reaction The League is gonna have when they find out this item is missing.

“Are you sure about this, Finn?” Thea asks, sliding yet another knife into her vest. God, she’s sexy, all bladed up like this. I wonder if we have time for a little good luck sex. Deacon’s forearm slams into my chest when I take a step toward her. I give him a questioning look.

“We don’t have time for whatever you’re thinking, Finn. She asked you a question.” He says, tightening the straps on his shoulder holsters.

Question. Right. “I’ve got this, Pet. It’s a simple breaking and entering. I could do it sleep walking.”

“Yes, but if we get caught, you’ll be sanctioned.”

The card Thea cloned is Dean Gibson’s member card to a poker club. The building is listed as an overflow facility for Kolper Gallery. According to Thea, the top floor of the building is a staging site for challenge items. “Trust me, Thea, if this helps you get closer to claiming the fourth bloodline, then I’m in.”

She’s still tucking pointy objects away. How many secret compartments does she have? “You’ve got a holder inside your vest too?”

She walks over and slips my hand inside her jacket so I can feel the blade against her breastbone. It has a hole in the end of the knife, so all she has to do is hook a finger through it to get it free. Then she takes my other hand and presses it against her hip. I feel three thin daggers there. I really wanna fuck her right now.

“Focus, Finn.”

“I am focused.”

“On what we’re about to do.” She removes my hand from her tit. “Not on what you want us to do.”

“Who says we can’t do both? We fuck with The League, then we fuck to celebrate our success.”

She chuckles and walks away. I’m getting hard all over again. She didn’t tell me no. That means there’s a chance it can happen.